Artwork

Intro

I muddle around with 3D graphics programs. My favorites are POV-Ray and Blender. Both programs allow you to create 3D artwork.

POV-Ray is a ray-tracing program, hence the name. You create images by writing out statements in a file, which is parsed by POV-Ray and turned into an image. You use statements like: box { <0,0,0> <1,1,1> } to create a box with one corner at the origin and the other at <1,1,1>.

Blender is a lot more sophisticated program. It’s an open source 3D Graphics Workshop. With it, you can create 3D models, animate them, and edit your animations and other video into a finished product. It’s an impressive program, and it’s free. It can be intimidating, but there are lots of tutorials and there’s a great user community.

Projects

I’ve been working a lot with Blender lately. It’s an outstanding graphics program with capabilities similar to those available in commercial products such as Maya or 3DStudio. One major difference is that Blender is open source, so it’s free. It’s also well-supported by a very active community of developers. You can find new builds with patches that include the latest innovations at Graphical.org.

I’ve been making some artwork for my writers group, the Walpole Writers Group. You can see it at my Zazzle gallery, www.zazzle.com/rben13*

Earlier projects

My latest project is creating a 3D model of a Monarch butterfly. It’s proven a lot more challenging than I thought, because I kept wanting to do more and more detail. The pictures here should give you some idea what I’m talking about. These are test renders. The modelÂ isn’t nearly finished, yet. I’m waiting to do the wings until I can get some butterflies and scan their wings, or find really good high resolution pictures that will work.